Typically network operations have a variety of hardware and software systems for managing their networks. For example, they have systems for billing, planning and configuring the network, configuring neighbour lists, measuring and managing performance, for triggering alarms and raising and managing trouble tickets. The data from all of these systems is usually stored in separate databases (sometimes with separate databases of each type for every region or administrative area) with little or no communication between them. This makes it hard for engineers to manage changes network performance. For example network operators would currently have difficulty associating a sudden rise in dropped calls with a change in the serving sector's antenna configuration that caused it.
Consequently in the course of their daily work, radio engineers usually use a multitude of different tools, each of which is limited to solving a specific problem. For example, an engineer when performing a routine daily investigation into base stations that have a high handover failure rate typically follows multiple manual steps, some of which are paper-based, and uses a variety of different tools. This is inefficient, error prone, and time consuming and does not facilitate the sharing of information and data between different engineers and teams.
More generally, it is desirable to be able to correct problems reported at a relatively high level within a mobile phone network, for example from an OMC (Operation and Maintenance Centre) with reasons for the problems, which typically stem from a much lower level, typically the radio subsystem. One difficulty, however, is the vast quantities of data which the radio subsystem generates. It is further desirable to extend this concept from solving problems to optimizing performance of a mobile phone network, preferably automatically.